At least 27 people from sub-Saharan Africa have died in recent days after being expelled from Tunisia towards the Libya border and abandoned in the desert in relentless heat, according to Libyan authorities.

The Libyan Interior Ministry has stepped up security patrols along the porous border with Tunisia in an attempt to curtail the flow of illegal migrants, according to a government statement released Monday.

The Libyan Border Control Department on Monday found two bodies of illegal migrants near the Tunisian border, where hundreds more remain stranded after being expelled by Tunisian authorities.

In the unbearable midday heat, a Libyan patrol near the border with Tunisia comes across a black African man collapsed on the reddish-brown desert sand.

Forces of the Libyan Border Guard have found six unidentified bodies of illegal migrants of sub-Saharan nationality near the border with Tunisia, reports the interior ministry of the Government of National Unity on Sunday.

The humanitarian crisis at the Tunisia-Libya border has intensified in recent weeks, with the discovery of over 25 bodies in the no man’s land between the two countries, according to aid groups and Tunisian officials.

A video is circulating online showing an outraged Libyan border guard criticising the forcible deportation of black Africans from Tunisia into the desert.

The Al-Assa border security sector of the Border Guard Service has conducted desert security patrols to prevent illegal immigrants coming from Tunisia from entering Libyan territory, the Ministry of Interior announced.

An Arab rights group called Monday for international help for around 360 sub-Saharan migrants who Libyan authorities say were rescued after having been abandoned in the desert by Tunisian police on the border with Libya.

Libyan border guards have rescued dozens of migrants who have been left in the desert by Tunisian authorities without water and food, and their numbers are “rising”, an officer said Sunday.